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Celebrate Kwanzaa with the community

Joanne MaliszewskiStaff Writer
Published 12:03 a.m. ET Nov. 29, 2014

The planners of the 2014 Kwanzaa celebration include: Donna and Wayne Smith, Laurie Scott, Farmington Community Library childrens librarian, Douglas and Ouley Saulsberry and Roy and Sonia Anderson. Also on the planning committee but not picture are Jessica and Dirk Beamer.(Photo: Joanne Maliszewski)

The planners of this year’s annual Kwanzaa celebration on Dec. 6 believe the world would be a much better place if people embraced and lived according to the holiday’s seven principles.

“We live by these principles throughout our entire lives,” said Wayne Smith. “They are an inspiration.”

Kwanzaa’s seven principles are the heart of the celebration 2-5 p.m., Saturday, Dec. 6 in the upstairs auditorium at the Farmington Hills branch of the library, 32737 12 Mile.

“You have to have faith in something or someone,” said Ouley Saulsberry.

Smith and Saulsberry are among the event’s planners, which also includes Douglas Saulsberry, Donna Smith, Roy and Sonia Anderson and Dirk and Jessica Beamer.

The public is invited to learn about the seven principles that are based on African tradition and do not involve politics or religion. The principles are: self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith.

The seven principles and the celebration have Laurie Scott, children’s librarian, excited. While the event has been celebrated in the library, this year marks the library’s first year as co-sponsor.

“I jumped on the bandwagon,” Scott said. “We are providing the space and the general library publicity. I value this as a cultural awareness event.”

The principles, Scott said, are about community and each other. “Community togetherness, knowing your community and yourself. This is a celebration of all that.”

In the years the planners have organized the event, increasingly more people attend, particularly with children. “By bringing in the library, it puts out the word of the diversity we have in this community,” said Douglas Saulsberry.

The celebration will include music, dance, storytelling and family presentations of the Kwanzaa principles.

Again this year, popular storyteller Rosie Chapman will be on hand. And for the first time, the Harrison High School Dance Troupe, led by teacher Tumijah Banks, will perform. Return African dancer Andrea Hetheru also will perform.

“The principles cross ethnic, religious and economic lines,” said Roy Anderson. “It is about unity and all of us coming together.”

In reaching that goal, Ouley Saulsberry said, we all must find our purpose in life and help each other and the community. Sonia Anderson agreed. Before she really knew about the Kwanzaa holiday, she was raised in its traditions of family and community. “The whole Kwanzaa idea is just that.”

While presentations will be made, including from Farmington Public Schools officials, who were in on the beginning of the annual celebration almost10 years ago, visitors can look forward to refreshments, food and a chance to gather.

Sonia Anderson and Donna Smith claim the food department of the celebration. Each will cook and bake for the event, including peach cobbler, green beans, macaroni and cheese, sweet potato pie and pecan pie — to name a few delicacies.

“The real purpose is that people are socializing and sharing what’s happened in the past year,” Donna Smith said.

No doubt there is tradition laced through the celebration, based on the seven principles. Visitors will see the foundation mat, a symbol of history; a unity cup, a symbol of unity; fruits and vegetables, symbol of the harvest; a candle holder, a symbol of origin; and gifts for good behavior in the past year.

“This has grown and evolved since it was started,” Roy Anderson said. “It’s a joy to see so many faces.”

jmaliszewski@hometownlife.com | 248-396-6620

Kwanzaa principles

Despite its African roots in history and culture, Kwanzaa is an American holiday started by a college professor in 1966 following the Watts Riots in Los Angeles. Kwanzaa is based on seven principles with their official names in Swahili.

The seven principles — Nguzo Saba — are:

•Umoja (Unity): To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.

•Kujichagulia (Self-Determination): To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.

•Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility): To build and maintain our community together and make our brother’s and sister’s problems our problems and to solve them together.

•Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics): To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together.

•Nia (Purpose): To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.

•Kuumba (Creativity): To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.

•Imani (Faith): To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.